> Will the MSN use WP to publish their for-print news
> articles, too, next?

There are lots of large publishers out there who are using WP for the entirety of their publishing efforts – including the print articles — or are considering moving in that direction. Britain’s largest regional paper, Express and Star, is one such example: http://www.expressandstar.com .

>[By the way, your link pop-ups are annoying, in my view.]

Ya, some people really like them, other do not. If you click the little link in the upper right corner of the preview window, you can disable it for this and all other sites.